Watch: Can The Gathering Spot gain its members’ trust back?
The Gathering Spot and Greenwood have seemingly squashed their beef, but members of the multistate networking club wonder what that means for its future.
Popular members-only club The Gathering Spot and its owner, Greenwood, the digital banking services company, have reportedly settled their business issues. The dispute started back in February when Ryan Wilson, CEO of The Gathering Spot, and co-founder TK Petersen sued Greenwood for allegedly withholding payments after acquiring the company.
In a recent joint statement from Greenwood and The Gathering Spot, Wilson said: “We are ready to finish what we started, in the same spirit that we began with and continue to build and grow our community.” As Jay-Z once said, “Nobody wins when the family feuds,” but members of The Gathering Spot still feel uneasy about its new leadership and are wondering if they should take their support elsewhere.
Entertainment attorney Lisa Bonner, who was also a Gathering Spot founding member, breaks down its lawsuit and ongoing concerns with theGrio’s Eboni K. Williams.
The following is a transcript of their conversation.
Eboni K. Williams: What happens when you mix networking, co-working and a little bit of fun? Well, you get The Gathering Spot. Founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2016 by Black entrepreneurs Ryan Wilson and TK Petersen, the popular members-only club has expanded to D.C. and Los Angeles, and its biggest selling point is that it’s “for us and by us.” Greenwood, a mobile banking platform that boasts investors like Killer Mike and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, along with tech giant Paul Judge, well, they bought the social club last year. But this year, it looks as if things went a little left.
The founders sued Greenwood, alleging that they were owed millions of dollars, and it was also announced that they were no longer running the day-to-day operations. And all of this happened at the same time that members were notified that a white man was joining the executive suite at Greenwood. Hmm. But now the founders of Greenwood and The Gathering Spot took to social media to let everybody know that the beef has been squashed.
Basically, they are saying that all parties are now on the same page and have the same mission. Also, the two founders say that they will still be involved in the day-to-day workings of the org. But listen, if you look at the comments, some folks are not buying it at all. One person said that artificial intelligence and a bot for Chat GPT wrote the statement, and others are calling for fuller transparency.
Joining me now is attorney and author of “LegaliTeas of Entrepreneurship,” Lisa Bonner. Lisa, thank you, of course, so much for being with us. Now, you have been following this case. You were a member of The Gathering Spot. So just tell us, what do you make of all of this so-called, I guess, resolution?
Lisa Bonner: Hi, Eboni. Thank you for having me. Firstly, I’m not exactly sure what to make of all this actually. It is, you know, we use the word ‘kerfuffle,’ and that’s, that’s the best I can say.
Williams: Indeed. And you know, Lisa, you were one of the founding members. So, and frankly, for the viewers that don’t know, when Lisa Bonner’s a founding member, that goes a long way. For myself as a Black woman in the law for many years, you know, you, your sister, y’alls credibility, what you mean to the culture, your professionalism, it has a certain currency.
And so I believe that there is an explanation owed to you. Absolutely. And your branding and your likeness that you attract to new startups like The Gathering Spot. And I’d like to know, Lisa, what type of questions would you like answered?
Bonner: I would like to know what happened. I would like to know, firstly, I want to talk about Greenwood, because I do want to really understand and unpack this Greenwood situation. I notice in the intro, you refer to it as Greenwood Bank, which they refer to it as Greenwood Bank when we were first told about the merger. It is important to know that it is not Greenwood Bank. Greenwood is not a bank. It is now Greenwood Financial, and they are not, they do not have a charter.
They do not, in order to get a charter, you need a certain number of liquid amount in money, dollars, in order to be considered for a charter. And you also have to have double your money in cash on hand to get a charter. They don’t; Greenwood never met that. They don’t offer mortgages. They don’t offer credit cards. So basically, all that they offer at this point is the equivalent of a rush debit card. And so I want to know how that is really benefiting members of the community. I know that Paul Judge has a very unsavory reputation in this industry, in this community.
So, I really want to know, you know, what’s going on for real? How was this merger a benefit to the members? Now, I want to be clear, I understand that when people start a company, the idea is to scale and sell it. No doubt about that. However, I don’t see how this is beneficial to the community at all. And there’s been so much mess that has been going on. It’s just, it’s just sloppy, and it just, I don’t like it. But I do want to be clear that I do respect TK and Ryan. I think what they’ve done with The Gathering Spot is to be commended. They’re young. They’re in their 30s, early 30s.
Williams: Indeed. So speaking of that, Lisa, let’s talk about the lawsuit itself for just a second. Tell us a little bit about what the original lawsuit was rooted in. What was the claim alleged in that?
Bonner: There were two lawsuits, and basically their first one was filed back in, I think it was earlier in the winter, and that was basically they missed a payment that was supposed to be paid. That really, I didn’t really get into that one too much because what happened secondly is Ryan Wilson individually last week sued on 7/11, filed suit in the Fulton County Court against Paul Judge and Ryan Glover personally, alleging fraudulent transfers of money, breach of fiduciary duty, and they wanted to void the transfer and return the money to The Gathering Spot so they could get that $5 million and pay themselves and also pay the workers of The Gathering Spot the bonuses that were allegedly owed. So, it’s real, real sloppy.
And like I said, you don’t file — and you know this, Eboni — you don’t file a baseless lawsuit. There has to be some meat behind that. And so I know that they went through, they went to the mat before this was filed, because this is not something you want to do. So whatever the intent was behind it, it clearly worked from an economic standpoint. But from a PR standpoint, I think that we are still looking at a very, very serious PR crisis on The Gathering Spot, sadly.
Williams: And that’s the thing, right, Lisa? Once you file a claim, you know that that becomes public record. We’re all able to see that complaint. We’re all able to see whether it’s dismissed, whether it’s continued. So, now, this kind of Oh, never mind, we’re good … It doesn’t really wash, right? Because at some point, as you say, you were willing to file a public claim of this nature. So there’s some — what does my mom say? — some explaining that needs to be done here.
Bonner: Yeah. They got some explaining to do.
Williams: Exactly. They’ve got some explaining to do.
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